231 research outputs found
A Civic Republican Analysis of Mental Capacity Law
Get PDFThis article draws upon the civic republican tradition to offer new conceptual resources for the normative assessment of mental capacity law. The republican conception of liberty as non-domination is used to identify ways in which such laws generate arbitrary power that can underpin relationships of servility and insecurity. It also shows how non-domination provides a basis for critiquing legal tests of decision-making that rely upon âdiagnosticâ rather than âfunctionalâ criteria. In response, two main civic republican strategies are recommended for securing freedom in the context of the legal regulation of psychological disability: self-authorisation techniques and participatory shaping of power. The result is a series of proposals for the reform of decisional capacity law, including a transition towards purely functional assessment of decisional capacity, surer legal footing for advanced care planning, and greater control over the design and administration of decision-making capacity laws by those with psychological disabilities
Are Workers Dominated?
Get PDFThis article undertakes a republican analysis of power in the workplace and labour market in order to determine whether workers are dominated by employers. Civic republicans usually take domination to be subjection to an arbitrary power to interfere with choice. But when faced with labour disputes over what choices it is normal for workers to make for themselves, these accounts of domination struggle to determine whether employers possess the power to interfere. I propose an alternative capabilitarian conception of domination as the arbitrary power to determine access to capabilities necessary for relationships of equality between citizens. This approach allows us to diagnose domination in the workplace and the labour market but does not capture unfreedom arising from the wider socio-structural position of workers. Thus, I supplement this capabilitarian account of the domination of workers with a structural account of dominating power, which reveals a richer set of conditions under which employers dominate workers
Civic Republican Medical Ethics
Get PDFThis article develops a civic republican approach to medical ethics. It outlines civic republican concerns about the domination that arises from subjection to an arbitrary power of interference, while suggesting republican remedies to such domination in healthcare. These include proposals for greater review, challenge, and pre-authorisation of medical power. It extends this analysis by providing a civic republican account of assistive arbitrary power, showing how it can create similar problems within both formal and informal relationships of care, and offering strategies for tackling it. Two important objections to civic republican medical ethics â that it overvalues independence and political participation in healthcare â are also considered and rebutted
Autonomy and Orthonomy
Get PDFThe ideal of personal autonomy faces a challenge from advocates of orthonomy, who think good government should displace self-government. These critics claim that autonomy is an arbitrary kind of psychological harmony and that we should instead concentrate on ensuring our motivations and deliberations are responsive to reasons. This paper recasts these objections as part of an intramural debate between approaches to autonomy that accept or reject the requirement for robust rational capacities. It argues that autonomy depends upon such responsiveness to reasons, countering objections that âexternalistâ rationalist criteria strip the self from self-government
A Law of One's Own: SelfâLegislation and Radical Kantian Constructivism
Get PDFAbstractRadical constructivists appeal to selfâlegislation in arguing that rational agents are the ultimate sources of normative authority over themselves. I chart the roots of radical constructivism and argue that its two leading Kantian proponents are unable to defend an account of selfâlegislation as the fundamental source of practical normativity without this legislation collapsing into a fatal arbitrariness. Christine Korsgaard cannot adequately justify the critical resources which agents use to navigate their practical identities. This leaves her account riven between rigorism and voluntarism, such that it will not escape a paradox that arises when selfâlegislation is unable to appeal to external normative standards. Onora O'Neill anchors selfâlegislation more firmly to the selfâdisciplining structures of reason itself. However, she ultimately fails to defend sufficiently unconditional practical norms which could guide legislation. These endemic problems with radical constructivist models of selfâlegislation prompt a reconstruction of a neglected realist selfâlegislative tradition which is exemplified by Christian Wolff. In outlining a rationalist and realist account of selfâlegislation, I argue that it can also make sense of our ability to overcome anomie and deference in practical action. Thus, I claim that we need not make laws but can make them our own.</jats:p
Wage slavery:A neo-Roman account
Get PDFThe idea of wage slavery is often regarded with suspicion even among critics of capitalism. Sceptics note the dubious racial politics associated with its use, while recording many differences between the condition of waged workers and chattel slaves. However, these objections are more plausible on some conceptions of wage slavery than others. I look to the history of political thought to recover and reformulate a more defensible account, drawing on a neo-Roman understanding of slavery as subjection to anotherâs will (rather than as ownership or social death). I demonstrate not only that a neo-Roman vocabulary was taken up by abolitionists, but recount how radical republicans used it to criticise the wage relation and call for the socialisation of property. This neo-Roman approach is shown to represent a break with more paternalistic appeals to wage slavery emerging from Tory radicals and Southern apologists for chattel slavery. However, in order to avoid cheapening the accusation of wage slavery, I argue that it only obtains when a workerâs ability to meet their most vital material needs is dependent on the will of employers. Thus, wage slavery becomes an extreme form of economic unfreedom, which does not encompass every case of worker domination
Flexible couplings: diffusing neuromodulators and adaptive robotics
Get PDFRecent years have seen the discovery of freely diffusing gaseous neurotransmitters, such as nitric oxide (NO), in biological nervous systems. A type of artificial neural network (ANN) inspired by such gaseous signaling, the GasNet, has previously been shown to be more evolvable than traditional ANNs when used as an artificial nervous system in an evolutionary robotics setting, where evolvability means consistent speed to very good solutionsÂżhere, appropriate sensorimotor behavior-generating systems. We present two new versions of the GasNet, which take further inspiration from the properties of neuronal gaseous signaling. The plexus model is inspired by the extraordinary NO-producing cortical plexus structure of neural fibers and the properties of the diffusing NO signal it generates. The receptor model is inspired by the mediating action of neurotransmitter receptors. Both models are shown to significantly further improve evolvability. We describe a series of analyses suggesting that the reasons for the increase in evolvability are related to the flexible loose coupling of distinct signaling mechanisms, one ÂżchemicalÂż and one Âżelectrical.
A Civic Republican Analysis of Mental Capacity Law
Get PDFThis article draws upon the civic republican tradition to offer new conceptual resources for the normative assessment of mental capacity law. The republican conception of liberty as non-domination is used to identify ways in which such laws generate arbitrary power that can underpin relationships of servility and insecurity. It also shows how non-domination provides a basis for critiquing legal tests of decision-making that rely upon âdiagnosticâ rather than âfunctionalâ criteria. In response, two main civic republican strategies are recommended for securing freedom in the context of the legal regulation of psychological disability: self-authorisation techniques and participatory shaping of power. The result is a series of proposals for the reform of decisional capacity law, including a transition towards purely functional assessment of decisional capacity, surer legal footing for advanced care planning, and greater control over the design and administration of decision-making capacity laws by those with psychological disabilities
The Formation of Population III Binaries from Cosmological Initial Conditions
Full text linkPrevious high resolution cosmological simulations predict the first stars to
appear in the early universe to be very massive and to form in isolation. Here
we discuss a cosmological simulation in which the central 50 solar mass clump
breaks up into two cores, having a mass ratio of two to one, with one fragment
collapsing to densities of 10^{-8} g/cc. The second fragment, at a distance of
800 astronomical units, is also optically thick to its own cooling radiation
from molecular hydrogen lines, but is still able to cool via collision-induced
emission. The two dense peaks will continue to accrete from the surrounding
cold gas reservoir over a period of 10^5 years and will likely form a binary
star system.Comment: Accepted by Science, first published online on July 9, 2009 in
Science Express. 16 pages, 4 figures, includes supporting online materia
Hybrid geographical narratives:the complex hazard system and applications for sustainable futures
Get PDF- âŚ
